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An innovation will get traction only if it helps people get something that they're already doing in their lives done better.

Clayton Christensen

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Clayton Christensen
Age: 67 †
Born: 1952
Born: April 6
Died: 2020
Died: January 23
Economist
Missionary
Priest
Professor
University Teacher
Writer
Salt Lake City
Utah
Clayton Magleby Christensen
Helping
Better
Done
Something
Traction
People
Helps
Innovation
Already
Lives

More quotes by Clayton Christensen

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Ultimately, when you come up with a classification scheme that is collectively exhaustive and mutually exclusive, then the theory can become what Kuhn called a paradigm.
Clayton Christensen
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People still cling to this belief that innovation is just random and unpredictable. But if you look closely, there are some real patterns. The companies that recognize and take advantage of those patterns have the real opportunity to create competitive advantage.
Clayton Christensen
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The biggest mistake is an over-reliance on data. Managers will say if there are no data they can take no action. However, data only exist about the past. By the time data become conclusive, it is too late to take actions based on those conclusions.
Clayton Christensen
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Innovation simply isn't as unpredictable as many people think. There isn't a cookbook yet, but we're getting there.
Clayton Christensen
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If I know what to spec, and I can measure it, and there are no unpredictable interdependencies between what you do and what I must do in response, then an economist would say that is sufficient information for a market to emerge between you and me.
Clayton Christensen
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In the study of management, unfortunately, many writers have been so anxious to articulate a theory in the form of, If you do this, this will result, that they never go through this careful effort.
Clayton Christensen
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The path I am trying so hard to follow is in fact the one that God my Father and His Son Jesus Christ want me to pursue. It has brought me deep happiness.
Clayton Christensen
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To prop up the stock price, managers have to turn down the screws on everybody. That forces them to cancel all the projects that would lead to future growth in order to drop money to the bottom line. This is HP's dilemma today. Once a company's growth has stopped, the game as we have known it is over. It's a scary thing.
Clayton Christensen
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Every time you take someone figuratively by the hand and introduce him or her to Jesus Christ, you will feel how deeply our Savior loves you and loves the person whose hand is in yours.
Clayton Christensen
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Management is the most noble of professions if it's practiced well.
Clayton Christensen
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Questions are places in your mind where answers fit. If you haven't asked the question, the answer has nowhere to go. It hits your mind and bounces right off. You have to ask the question - you have to want to know - in order to open up the space for the answer to fit.
Clayton Christensen
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The best strategy is a balance between having a deliberate one, and a flexible, or emergent strategy.
Clayton Christensen
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Innovation almost always is not successful the first time out. You try something and it doesn't work and it takes confidence to say we haven't failed yet. Ultimately you become commercially successful.
Clayton Christensen
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Because if the decisions you make about where you invest your blood, sweat, and tears are not consistent with the person you aspire to be, you’ll never become that person.
Clayton Christensen
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Businesses want to think in terms of categories. Consumers want us to think in terms of their needs.
Clayton Christensen
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If you study the root causes of business disasters, over and over you'll find this predisposition toward endeavors that offer immediate gratification.
Clayton Christensen
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When product performance outstrips the ability of customers to use that performance in an industry, the competitive game changes. Under those circumstances you have to decouple components businesses from assembly businesses.
Clayton Christensen
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Justification for infidelity and dishonesty in all their manifestations lies in the marginal cost economics of “just this once.
Clayton Christensen
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...it's easier to hold to your principles 100% of the time than it is to hold to them 98% of the time.
Clayton Christensen
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Because of the disruption phenomenon - technological progress outstripping the ability of customers to utilize it - the general tendency is for the money to migrate toward the subsystems.
Clayton Christensen